This Week in Ransomware: New Mexico, Portugal, Hospitality Chain, More

This week in ransomware, cybercriminals unleashed a fresh onslaught of attacks targeting a wide variety of organizations.

The increasing volume of ransomware attacks has prompted our new feature, this week in ransomware. We’ll list the latest attacks along with commentary from cybersecurity experts.

Bitglass, a Forcepoint company, on Thursday announced findings from its 2021 Malware and Ransomware Report. It shows ransomware has become the No. 1 priority on the minds of IT and security leaders, and they expect the cyber threat to get worse. Compounding this problem is that IT and security teams are still trying to figure out how to deal with the rapidly proliferating ransomware threat.

The report, a joint venture with Cybersecurity Insiders, surveyed hundreds of cybersecurity professionals across numerous industries.

Ransomware a Growing Threat

According to the findings, 75% of respondents believe malware and ransomware will be a larger cyber threat to their organization in the next 12 months. As a result, organizations are tackling the malware and ransomware problem head on with increased spending (50%) and changing IT security strategies (40%).

Further insights from the report include:

• Sixty-eight percent said they would not pay the ransom to recover data affected by a ransomware attack.
• Lack of budget (50%), evolving and sophisticated attacks (49%) and growing proliferation of threats (36%) are obstacles IT security teams now face.
• Cybercriminals continue to use classic social engineering techniques to get their ransomware into an organization. Those include phishing emails (61%), email attachments (47%) and user visiting malicious websites (39%).

Holger Schulze is founder of Cybersecurity Insiders.

Cybersecurity Insiders’ Holger Schulze

“With high-profile malware and ransomware attacks capturing recent headlines, organizations have elevated this problem to a top priority,” he said  “However, our research shows that IT and security teams face an uphill battle as they continue to struggle to figure out how to effectively deal with the looming ransomware threat.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for the latest ransomware news.